Kaleidescape, which has fought copy protection battles for years with Hollywood studios over its movie server technology that essentially copies encrypted Blu-ray and DVD material to a server’s hard drive, has taken the next step into digital downloads, presumably circumventing any further court-room drama.

Kaleidescape said it has a multi-year agreement with Warner Bros, marking “the first agreement that enables the electronic delivery of digital movies containing all of the extra content found on physical Blu-ray Discs or DVDs.”

It has also signed on as a licensor of the UltraViolet digital content locker system, giving Kaleidscape system owners the ability to view on multiple devices content they have legitimately purchased.

Customers purchased content can now be downloaded directly to Kaleidescape Systems from the newly launched Kaleidescape Store that is designed exclusively for online movie sales, Kaleidescape said in a statement.

Movies purchased on the Kaleidescape Store website can be downloaded on Kaleidescape movie servers through the newly released kOS 5.0 operating system.

The system employs an elaborate user interface designed to simplify finding movies from extensive libraries of purchased media.

Kaleidescape said movies can be viewed directly from the beginning without advertisements, trailers and extraneous menus.

A bookmark system in the Kaleidescape Movie Guide, also enables users to jump directly to memorable points a movie, or song.

“Once a customer's system is linked to an account on the Kaleidescape Store website, the titles of their current movie collection are automatically cataloged and kept up to date,” Kaleidescape said.

The Kaleidescape Store will offer a search feature enabling customers to buy multiple movie titles by favorite actors or directors.

Kaleidescape said Warner Bros. Digital Distribution is the first to license content for sale through the new Kaleidescape Store, and will be providing nearly 3,000 premium films and over 8,000 television episodes.

Kaleidescape said it has also licensed rights to the UltraViolet digital content locker system to ensure Kaleidescape owners have access to most of the content they’ve purchased on mobile devices.

Going forward, Kaleidescape said customers will be able to add movies already purchased on disc to their UltraViolet Collection for a small fee.

“The potential represented by the Kaleidescape System and the new Kaleidescape Store is, in many respects, similar to the role the iPod played in kick-starting online music purchases,” stated Michael Malcolm, Kaleidescape founder, chairman and CEO. “Our movie servers enable customers to consolidate their film libraries – whether from disc or download – for immediate playback. We believe that this consolidation is a pre-requisite for mass adoption of electronic movie purchases.”

Kaleidescape said downloaded content will be equal to 1080p video on Blu-ray Discs, and will include advanced lossless audio formats such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, and 24 frame-per-second progressive scan video.